Our journey- from 8 week old pup, to agility dog, school dog, and trickster. Training thoughts, tips and lots of problem solving, photography and general musings on owning a silly and serious paradoxical Aussie Shepherd.

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recovery update

A quick update on the cone-headed terror. Yesterday she had another acupuncture as she seemed to respond quite well to the first one, which given that she’s supposed to be resting, isn’t necessarily the best thing. While I was there, we removed the last of the paper tape covering her incision and saw that there was a nice red rash underneath – much like the rash underneath the first section I removed. I suspect she has an allergy to whatever the glue is in the tape.

So, while she has been feeling much, much better, and getting back to her normal self, this rash has floored her.

Luckily by this afternoon it seems to have mostly gone. I actually took her to the vet who said it was probably her internal stitches getting pulled as she starts getting more rowdy because she’s feeling better, to which I would ask: why then, on Friday morning, was she completely fine, and then once we took the tape off, she went crazy? It’s not like she went for a 5km run in between, all that happened was the tape coming off.

Anyway, her cone is off now. I’m definitely noticing lots more ‘pent up energy’ behaviours, which is a bit of a problem. I’ve been doing a couple of sessions a day shaping but even that’s difficult because I have to think of things she can do that don’t involve her body, and since 90% of what we do is strength, conditioning or balance-type tricks, or tricks that involve her sitting up, that makes it difficult. She’s almost a pro at putting a spoon in a bowl now though! I’m shaping the more ‘purposeful’ attempts, as sometimes she just throws the spoon in the direction of the bowl and it miraculously goes in. Which is bloody cute, but not as precise as I’d like! I’ve also just started doing some heeling and different kinds of heeling things and she’s very switched on to that. You can tell she’s just BEGGING for some movement and action, but we have to keep taking it easy. Wednesday isn’t that far now, kiddo.

Tomorrow we’re going to go visit an agility trial that’s nearby so she can (CALMLY) say hello to people and hopefully that will tire her out some. She’ll have to be either in her harness or on her halti though because I can’t see Lu being a calm pup at a trial after 2 weeks being cooped up. There’s another one next weekend too so hopefully I’ll make it to that, bring some toys along and just do some ring-side tricks, focus and play. Stitches will be out so we should be able to play a bit more by then (I don’t think it would be a good look if I whipped out the tug toy and started throwing her around while she’s still sewn up!!!).